HARARE City Council (HCC) yesterday unveiled an over US$500 million budget aimed at improving water reticulation and other key service areas.
Announcing the city’s 2024 budget, council’s finance and development committee chairperson Costa Mande said almost half of the budget would go towards water and sanitation.
“The water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme is a very key component of our city and if we perform well in this sector, we would have dealt with downstream problems particularly in the public health sector. The key outcome is improved water, sanitation and hygiene,” Mande said.
“The WASH programme is the cornerstone of service delivery. It has a projected expenditure of US$216 478 100 and will fund its activities through cost recovery tariffs after taking into consideration funding from devolution, loans and other sources.”
One of the pressing challenges faced by the city, Mande said, was the fluctuation of water treatment chemical prices, which are denominated in foreign currency.
“The prices of water treatment chemicals continue to be denominated in US dollars while the city is charging for water services in the local currency. The currency discrepancies mean that we continue to be overburdened by the continuous soaring of prices of the water treatment chemicals,” Mande said.
He said escalating debts was a major concern and had affected service delivery in the city.
“The debtors position remains a challenge as there is now a dilemma where residents say deliver we pay, and we say pay and we deliver,” Mande said.
“To that effect, as we struggle with service delivery, the debtors position continues to rise and is now ZWL$486,58 billion as of 30 September 2023 from the January 1 position of ZWL$96,07 billion. This position has placed council in a dire situation regarding funding of service delivery operations.”
Source Newsday
